Window on Washington

Abstract

Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference by Judea Pearl, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Reviewed by Roderick P. McDonald     

Early transition metal dopants in cuprous oxide: To spin or not to spin

We present a trend study of a large variety of dopants at the cation site in Cu₂O (i.e. substituting Cu), focussing largely on the early 3d-, 4d-, and 5d-transition metals (TMs) in which many of them are known to be non-magnetic. We also include s-, sp- and d¹⁰-metals for comparison. We find that doping with sp-elements results in zero spin moment while dopants with a partially filled d-band show a stronger tendency to magnetize and 3d-TM dopants exhibit a larger magnetic moment than most of the 4d- and 5d-TM dopants. From this trend study, we also find a correlation between their substitution enthalpy and associated interatomic relaxations. In particular, Ti-doped Cu₂O appears to be an interesting system, given its “peculiar” ability to exhibit a spin moment when doped with a non-magnetic substituent like Ti. We also find that the interaction between two doped Ti atoms in Ti₂:Cu₂O is predominantly antiferromagnetic, and interestingly (and unexpectedly), this interaction rapidly declines as a function of inter-dopant distance, as in the case for the magnetic late-TM dopants like Co₂:Cu₂O.     

Vectorial Approach to Fast Correlation Attacks

A new, vectorial approach to fast correlation attacks on binary memoryless combiners is proposed. Instead of individual input sequences or their linear combinations, the new attack is targeting subsets of input sequences as a whole thus exploiting the full correlation between the chosen subset and the output sequence. In particular, the set of all the input sequences can be chosen as the target. The attack is based on a novel iterative probabilistic algorithm which is also applicable to general memoryless combiners over finite fields or finite rings. To illustrate the effectiveness of the introduced approach, experimental results obtained for random balanced combining functions are presentedMost of this work was done while he was with Rome CryptoDesign Center, Gemplus, Italy     

On the Motion of a Dynamic System with Minimal Dissipation

The motion of a holonomic scleronomic non-conservative mechanicalsystem with minimal dissipation is considered. As applicationsof the theory several problems are studied in detail.     

Fusion around the barrier for 7Li+12C

Fusion cross-sections for the ⁷Li + ¹²C reaction have been measured at energies above the Coulomb barrier by the direct detection of evaporation residues. The heavy evaporation residues with energies below 3 MeV could not be separated out from the α-particles in the spectrum and hence their contribution was estimated using statistical model calculations. The present work indicates that suppression of fusion cross-sections due to the breakup of ⁷Li may not be significant for ⁷Li + ¹²C reaction at energies around the barrier.